Little Teddy
by Rumour of an Alchemist
Summary: Alternate Universe. One-Shot for now. Both Theodore Nott's parents were Death Eaters; his father died in the war. Soon it will be Theodore's turn to go to Hogwarts, to join his older brother, Terence. Does Theodore actually want to be in Slytherin house with his annoying older brother? Supplementary material to 'Saint Potter' story. Rated 'M' to be on safe side for swear-words.


Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling. I do not own Harry Potter.

Note: The following is set in an alternate universe married a muggle, Selene Tombs, and their daughter, Sophie Theresa Potter is 'The-Girl-Who-Lived'. Some situations, characters, and events have diverged considerably from canon.

Further Note: The following is material complimentary to my 'Saint Potter?' story, which latter (as of the 28th May, 2014) I hope to finally be able to update with the 'House of Salazar' chapter within the next week, even if the thing's not as polished as I'd have liked. Meanwhile, on with the adventures of this particular universe's version of Theodore Nott...

Rating: This story is rated 'M' to be on the safe side on account of possibly strong language in one section, used by the older boys.

* * *

When eight year old Theodore Nott had nightmares, it was of the girl on the (usually pink) unicorn, with the thunderbolt wand, and she was hunting after _him_.

She was The-Girl-Who-Lived of course, or how one book or another which Theodore had read described her. And she was after him in his nightmares because she was the destroyer of Voldemort (at the tender age of merely one and a quarter) and of most of his inner circle, and of course Theodore's parents were Death Eaters. Or at least had been (mortally so in the case of Theodore's father, who died at the Ministry in 1980).

Theodore's mother had only been small-fry in the Death Eater ranks, so the Crouch administration (mindful of he fact that someone would have to bring up her children) had stung her with a fine (to avoid Azkaban) not perhaps quite so eye-watering as it had placed upon more 'involved' Death Eaters, who were not now the sole carers for two children. But The-Girl-Who-Lived, in Theodore's nightmares, disregarded Ministry fines and pardons and was the merciless hunter and slayer of all things Death Eater related, or tainted by even the merest whiff of association with them.

Eight year old Theodore Nott truly hoped that the stories that Albus Dumbledore had sent her away to Australia (or even to the moon) to learn magic and fight other 'bad people' there, were true. It meant that she was a long way away, and with a lot of luck would stay that way, and never come any closer to him than unpleasant dreams.

* * *

Ten year old Theodore Nott was slightly more confident than his eight year old self had been, though he still had occasional nightmares about The-Girl-Who-Lived. He read the papers, on a daily basis, not because he understood or cared about most of what was in them, but because he was looking for Girl-Who-Lived sightings and there were none, or at least not any _credible_ ones. Wherever Albus Dumbledore had hidden her away (if indeed she _had_ survived that Hallowe'en night in 1981 at all, and that hadn't been just something made up by the Ministry and Albus Dumbledore) it looked by now that it wasn't anywhere remotely close to magical Britain, and that was good, in Theodore's opinion. Next year he would be going to Hogwarts, to join his older brother, Terence, and to try to do his best to make his mother proud. And the last thing that he would want would be The-Girl-Who-Lived also stalking those halls.

* * *

Eleven year old Theodore Nott waited in the railway carriage compartment, as the countryside flashed past, and the clouds lowered.

He occasionally consulted with an atlas, on the Express' progress. They were in Scotland now.

His brother, Terence, and Terence's mate, Brutus Carrow from his year in Slytherin, returned.

"Well if she is on the train, she's hiding right now." Terence said casually, dropping back into his seat. He ruffled Theodore's hair. "Little Teddy needn't worry about the unicorn riding horror out to get him, if she's the sort who's cowering in the toilet right now."

"Don't do that." Theodore said, flinching away.

"What? Take the name of the big bad Girl-Who-Lived in vain, or ruffle your hair?"

"Either." Theodore said. "She might get on at Carstairs still, and I'm not a boy of four any more."

"It's practically good as cowering if she gets on the Express for her first trip at the last chance, with all that _she's_ supposedly got to live up to, and you're my younger brother, so I shall ruffle your hair whenever I damn well like." Terence said. "I shall do so in six years time, when you are taking your NEWTs – or in _sixty_ for that matter, supposing The-Girl-Who-Lived hasn't 'got' you by then."

"What I can't make out is why they've gone and made _Enid Featherstone_ one of the Slytherin prefects this year." Brutus grumbled. "Percy Weasley I can just about understand – his father may be round the bend, but half of us have a near relative who's more than a little bit embarrassingly eccentric, and his mother's someone who can get what she wants done at the Ministry, so I've heard. Plus, both Percy's parents are, let's face it, from very old families with good reputations for purity. But who are _the Featherstones_? On at least one side her family must be either squibs or muggles."

"Her mother was a MacNamara." Theodore supplied. "Old Irish pure-blood family." Both the older boys looked at him in surprise.

"How do you know that, Little Teddy?" Terence asked.

"I asked mother to find out for me who as many of the prefects as possible were going to be a month ago, and then researched the names and families." Theodore said stiffly. "You made jokes at my expense on several evenings, when I was sitting up late in the library checking stuff. You said 'stuff doesn't matter nearly as much if your family name is Nott', and that there was no need to study quite that hard."

Brutus gave a low whistle.

"Your bespectacled little twerp of a brother is good for something after all, Terence."

"Oi." Terence gave Brutus a 'friendly' slap to the chest. "You do NOT insult him to his face in my presence. We Notts are not some bastard half-blood line, with no sense of dignity, nor worse still muggle-borns with _no_ idea of how things are done at all. _I_ can make fun of him, _because_ he's my brother. _You_ are outside the family, so are not permitted to do so unless one of us invites you to do so, either literally or by breech of proper behaviour."

"Easy, easy, Terence." Brutus lifted both his hands in a conciliatory gesture. "What I meant to say, was that if he gets sorted into Slytherin, he's going to be bloody useful to have around."

"Hmmph. If he gets sorted into Slytherin, you will not forget yourself in such a fashion again, I trust. But I'll take that for now as an apology, and accept it upon my brother's behalf."

"But what I'd like to know," Brutus continued, lowering his hands, and some of the tension which had crept in easing out of his voice, "is who Featherstone's father is, if Merlin junior here can tell me that? I _am_ allowed to call him Merlin junior, right? That's supposed to be a compliment."

"You can call him Merlin junior, certainly." Terence said. "And that's a good question. Who _is_ her father, Theodore?"

"I don't know." Theodore said. "Not _precisely_. But as far as I could determine from the 'scandals' column of some old back-issues of _The Daily Prophet_, Enid Featherstone's mother had popped across from Ireland one day in her yacht, and was sailing off the Lancashire coast, when she spotted a young man on the beach who she liked the look of. So she nipped ashore, incapacitated him, dragged him back to her boat, and took him back to Ireland with her, where she ravished him repeatedly. I'm not sure what 'ravishing' entails. The dictionaries I tried to look it up in only listed an adjective, not a verb. But since there aren't any Featherstones anywhere in Magical Britain – or not before the current generation – I think Enid's mother must have kidnapped a muggle-born or even a muggle."

"I've heard things about the MacNamaras I think." Terence screwed his face up in concentration, and addressed Brutus. "Very determined family. If they want something, they take it, and to heck with what anyone else says or the consequences."

"Umm, so do we approve of Enid Featherstone or not?" Brutus looked uncertain.

"I suppose it depends how much she takes after her mother's side of the family." Terence replied.

Theodore inwardly sighed. He _had_ been hoping that one of the two older boys would notice the subtle hint he'd dropped and explain what the verb 'to ravish' actually meant, since the _Prophet_ column writer certainly hadn't, but either they hadn't noticed or they didn't know either – or they knew but didn't consider it worth explaining what it meant to him.

If he ended up in Slytherin, having his older brother in the same house was starting to look like it could be a big problem at times. Right now, Ravenclaw was starting to look extremely attractive. They _valued_ intelligence, weren't as derided as Hufflepuffs reportedly were, and Ravenclaw house _wasn't_ Gryffindor, where a big heroine like The-Girl-Who-Lived (if she showed up at all at Hogwarts this year) was bound to end up…

* * *

Several hours later, despite his best attempts to convince it otherwise, the Sorting Hat had sent Theodore to Slytherin anyway. Something had gone badly wrong with the sorting this year, Theodore had concluded, the hat having already sent most of the children roughly his own age whom he already _knew_ – the ones from _respectable_ families – to houses other than Slytherin. (Well: obviously Kara Black, who had been the first pupil put in Slytherin of the evening, was from a _highly_ respectable family, but she'd been in hiding Merlin-knew-where for the past however-many-years, and Theodore wasn't in a position to consider himself even remotely acquainted with her.) All of which looked like leaving Theodore potentially friendless (unless the hat sent Zacharias Smith to join him, though Theodore knew Zacharias was aiming for the house of his believed ancestress, Helga Hufflepuff), in his year, and with the problem of his often bossy and annoying elder brother to cope with. Theodore was wondering if the likes of Neville Longbottom and Daphne Greengrass might be worth the effort (and just what was a _muggle-born_ like Justin Finch-Fletchley doing in Slytherin anyway?) or whether he ought to grit his teeth and throw himself upon his brother's dubious mercy, when the name of 'Potter, Sophie' was called, and like the rest of the hall his eyes turned towards the figure advancing upon the hat.

She was _advancing_. Like it was her destiny or something. Despite her semi-ridiculous attire (and that hat which she was stuffing in her pocket) and with the entire hall looking at her, she was proceeding forwards as if she were an unstoppable force, stepped right out of a story book. Theodore was so terrified as all the old fears and every nightmare he'd ever had came flooding back, that he missed what she said on the way to the hat – he only caught the word 'unicorn' of it. But she had paused to address the whole hall, in a quite unterrified fashion.

Fortunately, Theodore reassured himself, as the dreaded Girl-Who-Lived sat down on the stool, there was no doubt to his mind at all that she could be destined for any house but Gryffindor. And then, as her sorting went on and on, a faint uneasy idea began to gnaw away at Theodore's mind – the Sorting Hat was doing mad, perverse, things this year, and it clearly was plotting to put The-Girl-Who-Lived somewhere other than Gryffindor. Why else would it be taking so long over her? Theodore tried to work out if it was going to put her in Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff (she was a Dark Lord annihilating juggernaut, with a _muggle_ mother, so Slytherin house was clearly completely out of the question) and finally settled on 'Ravenclaw' half a minute before the Sorting Hat turned his world upside down and almost caused Theodore to outright faint in terror, by shouting out 'Slytherin!'

Theodore watched potentially unicorn-riding doom-most-horrible heading across the floor in businesslike fashion towards him (and the first year Slytherin table generally), and knew that suddenly, whether he was going to have to rely on his older brother for support was the least of his worries. The Girl-Who-Lived was going to be in his year – sleeping on the corridor just across a hall from him (if she actually did such a mundane thing as falling asleep), and the Slytherin boys' rooms (if Terence were to be believed) were _not_ protected against entry by girls. There was considerably less to prevent her from killing Theodore in his sleep (or doing something worse) than to stop him from making any pre-emptive strike. And having been sent to Slytherin she was clearly either the darkest, most dangerous witch since Morgana, or a heroine out to destroy utterly Slytherin house, whom the hat had sent here to make her task much, much, easier.

How was Theodore supposed to escape a messy end?

* * *

Author Notes: (subject to update)

In the Saint Potter universe as far as (usual) seating arrangements for pupils in the great hall go, there are tables for each year group in each house (E.G. first year Gryffindor, first year Hufflepuff, first year Ravenclaw, first year Slytherin, second year Gryffindor, etc, etc) making for a total of 28 tables. These tables are approximately picnic-bench size and shape, and replace the four long house-tables of canon.

Theodore Nott in this universe has one elder sibling, his brother Terence. Terence and his friend Brutus Carrow are both fourth years in 1991 when Theodore goes to Hogwarts for his first year (although Terence has an early September birthday, and is the oldest in his year).

In this universe Voldemort launched near simultaneous attacks on the Ministry of Magic and Hogwarts during the summer holidays of 1980. (The Ministry attack was a diversion, intended to occupy aurors and magical law-enforcement forces, so that when Voldemort attacked Hogwarts himself, no help could come to Albus Dumbledore.) This was the occasion during which Theodore's father was killed. (For the record Voldemort's attack on Hogwarts was beaten off with losses on both sides, but with Albus Dumbledore having survived.)

After the war finished, Barty Crouch became Minister for Magic. Lower ranking Death Eaters were officially pardoned if they paid a heavy fine.

Obviously some of the sortings which happen the night Theodore arrives at Hogwarts (and some which have gone before it) are non-canonical. As mentioned in the opening notes, this is set in an alternate universe and some characters have gone down different paths...

Enid Featherstone and the Irish pure-blood family, the MacNamaras, are non-canonical at the time of my writing this. My online sources inform me that 'MacNamara' can be translated as 'hound of the sea'; I don't know if that's accurate, but it inspired the 'beach raid' element of the story of Enid's origins presented here.


End file.
